How much does a sequential royal game's strategy differ from it's non-sequential counterpart?

There aren't that many resources on sequential royal strategy. The only thing I could think of is dumping a dealt straight flush/3oaK when given 3 or 4 to a sequential royal. The specific game I have in mind is the progressive Ace's and 8's machine at Circus Circus, which pays 10,000 for a sequential royal.

Quote: Dyvan13

There aren't that many resources on sequential royal strategy. The only thing I could think of is dumping a dealt straight flush/3oaK when given 3 or 4 to a sequential royal. The specific game I have in mind is the progressive Ace's and 8's machine at Circus Circus, which pays 10,000 for a sequential royal.

I played some seq Royal games and even A&8 in the past. A&8 at CC was one of the first +EV progessives I played.

IIRC...
3 card seq will probably beat a dealt flush.

Any 2 card (probably not an ace 10) will beat the 4 card high stright = AKQJ.

J 10 ss seq. Over a non high card 3 card stright flush draw.
A 10 ss seq will probably beat Q J K off or any 2 high cards.
KT and QT ss seq. Over any 4 card streight 3 high.

I would be confident enough myself to use them changes, but I wouldn't care about most of them (other than the 3 card RF VS dealt flush) because it's not that big of a deal. So here is my warning.
Warning: this is not from a proper strategy card or properly calulated and they may or may not be 100% accurate. So please don't yell at me if you would have had a better hand.

Hopefully it will give you some hands to think about. You might think about getting a real program that has somthing that can run Seq Royal I don't know what ones do or dont. I would Never spend money on a VP program and support people that sell them.

You could use the WOO calculator and plug in some hands (ie: pat flush vs 3 card seq royal), but change the value of the royal accordingly. There are 2 ways to hit a Royal at that point, say, TJQKA or AJQKT. One pays 4,000 the other pays 10,000. The average is 7,000. So use that number in the calculator.

Then do the same thing for other hands. When drawing to a 2 card seq. royal, you'd have to change the math around a tad. I'm a bit tired so forgive me if I messed this up, but there should be 9 ways to complete a royal, one of which is a sequential, 8 are normal. 8*4000 + 1*10000 = 42,000. 42,000/9 = 4,666. You can hopefully see at this point, the sequential RF doesn't add much value to many hands. And overall in general, I believe it adds very little. It has to be a huge amount to add something of noficable value.

Quote: RS

You could You can hopefully see at this point, the sequential RF doesn't add much value to many hands. And overall in general, I believe it adds very little. It has to be a huge amount to add something of noficable value.

I agree with this as well, but if you are spending a lot of time playing something, then it's worthwhile learning it, especially if you are just starting new to VP. It will help sharpen your future strategy learning abilities and on the fly strategy decisions making on hands you may be unsure of.

Also, some people may never forgive themselves if they made a hold and noticed their seq royal cards came in. Then they inquired about the correct play and found out they made the wrong hold.

Quote: RS

You could use the WOO calculator and plug in some hands (ie: pat flush vs 3 card seq royal), but change the value of the royal accordingly. There are 2 ways to hit a Royal at that point, say, TJQKA or AJQKT. One pays 4,000 the other pays 10,000. The average is 7,000. So use that number in the calculator.

Then do the same thing for other hands. When drawing to a 2 card seq. royal, you'd have to change the math around a tad. I'm a bit tired so forgive me if I messed this up, but there should be 9 ways to complete a royal, one of which is a sequential, 8 are normal. 8*4000 + 1*10000 = 42,000. 42,000/9 = 4,666. You can hopefully see at this point, the sequential RF doesn't add much value to many hands. And overall in general, I believe it adds very little. It has to be a huge amount to add something of noficable value.

Aren't there six ways to make a Royal Flush when drawing three, one of which is sequential?

What you should do is, when using the Wizard's hand calculator, increase the amount of the Royal by the difference between the sequential and normal payouts, divided by:
2, if you are holding three cards;
6, if you are holding two;
24, if you are holding one (12, if you are holding Q in the middle position and both A, K, Q, J, 10 and 10, J, Q, K, A are considered sequential);
120, if you discard all five cards (60, if both A, K, Q, J, 10 and 10, J, Q, K, A are considered sequential).

Time to update the calculator for this preference.

Video Poker for Winners includes strategy for sequential royal flushes

Quote: Ibeatyouraces

Time to update the calculator for this preference.

Not as easy as it sounds - especially if you are talking about the strategy / expected return calculators.
The 134,459 "unique hands" now have to take into account the order of at least some of the cards.

I assume it could be done like this:

If all five cards are discarded, any royal flushes have a 1/120 chance of being sequential.
If any cards are kept, and (a) any 2-9s are kept, (b) cards of more than one suit are kept, or (c) a 10-A of a kept suit is discarded, then a sequential royal is impossible.
Otherwise, three different probabilities need to be considered; any royal, a sequential royal, and a non-sequential royal. Note that the first one equals the sum of the last two. ("Any royal" is needed for situations where a high card is kept, but it is not in a position to make a sequential royal - for example, if a Queen that is not in the middle of the five cards is kept.)
The probability of a sequential royal is the probability of "any royal" divided by:
24, if four cards were discarded;
6, if three were;
2, if two were;
1, if only one was.
Calculate the expected return of the play if a sequential was possible, and also the ER if it was not.
Compare the 32 ERs for sequential possible to determine the correct "sequential possible" play, then compare the 32 ERs for sequential impossible to determine the correct "sequential impossible" play.

Here's the tricky part: calculating the overall ER for the pay table. I think you multiply the sequential-possible ER by the fraction of the 120 possible orders of the hand that have a sequential ER possible, then multiply the sequential-impossible ER by the fraction that do not, and add those up, but that may not take into account things like being dealt something like 2s Js Qh Kh As.

Quote: rsactuary

Video Poker for Winners includes strategy for sequential royal flushes

Perhaps someone can calculate how long it would take to make up for the cost of a program just to learn a few non obvious changes.

Sure you can use it for other things, however, you can get most of the other stuff online for free.

Lets assume you are playing with a slight advantage. How long is it taking to slow down and look to see if everything is in order(pun intended) before you hold and draw?

I get that the OP probably is not worried about his hourly rate and doesn't want to miss out on a big payday. I get the fact that sometimes its fun to go though the motions and figure it out and just know. And it's always better to do it right if possible. But this is something AP's need to consider when they start getting way to technical thinking they need to play 100% perfect. IMO if you need to be 100% perfect to see some EV....You are playing the wrong stuff. Occasionally you find something where it's actually costing you money to slow down and look for the small changes.

Several years ago at the Palms, playing their 50,000 coin quarter sequential. Playing along on full pay Bonus Deluxe and dealt:

10, J, x, K, A

The four cards were suited in perfect position. After pausing a bit and not believing I actually had a draw to hit it, held the 4, prayed for the Q, hit draw and NADA. Would have been really, really cool.

I had one sequential royal in my life

on single line quarters :(

I had 3 dealt royals., so that tells you how rare these damn things are. I wouldn't want to play a sequential royal progressive.

I've had a few. Favorite was holding the Ah on the last real on spin poker playing just the one line and watching the line fall in T, J, Q, K in that order.

A friend sent me a link to a story about a $150K sequential RF (SRF) on a 6/5 BP quarter game: /business/casinos-gaming/150k-royal-flush-jackpot-hits-in-west-las-vegas-valley-2121444/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
He asked me for the EV. I told him that I have never played a SRF or reversible SRF game, and my software could not calculate the EV. However, I quickly realized that it wasn't that hard to add SRFs to my VP strategy calculator. ThatDonGuy describes the basics of the SRF algorithm that I used. I spent a few hours coding it up and then five hours trying to figure out why my EV did not match the EV on Mike's page: /games/video-poker/tables/sequential-royal/
I was always off in the fifth significant digit. Mike has 9/6 JB with 10,000 SRF at 99.771898% and I came up with 99.77938178%. I did a bunch of sanity checks like calculating the added EV for dealt SRFs by hand, and still could not find any obvious mistakes in my code. Then, I started searching the web and found out that Mike has a calculator that does SRFs and RSRFs. When I used Mike's calculator, I got an answer that agreed with mine, except that Mike truncates rather than rounding up the last digit. So Mike's calculator result disagrees with Mike's SRF article. It appears that the result in the article was from an earlier program, since the total combination/permutations and EV are quite different for 9/6 JOB:
Totals 199,332,305,172,000 0.997793
Total 287038519447680000 0.99771898
Mike has so many articles that it is hard to make sure they are all accurate. The bottom line is that I believe his calculator is right and his article is wrong. Does anyone have a different SRF calculator that can confirm the right EV for a 10,000 bet RF?
BTW, I had correctly guessed that the first strategy change would be something like Tc2cQcTdAc. Penalties make the four-flush the right hold in 9/6 JOB. If the sequential RF is just 802 bets versus the normal 800, the strategy flips to holding the suited TQA. You would break up a dealt straight flush like suited TJQK9 at a mere 2300-bet SRF. For a SRF paying 107,000 bets, you would break up a dealt straight flush like suited TJQ89!